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Reproduced below is an
extract from General
Sir Frederick Maurice's
post-war account of the closing period of the war, The Last Four Months,
published in 1919. In this extract Maurice addressed the prevailing
controversy which debated whether the Allies had been premature in
agreeing an armistice with beaten Germany.

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It had been argued that
allowing Germany to negotiate an armistice before the Allies had beaten the
German Army on German soil enabled German military leaders to claim that the
Army had not been beaten in the field but had been
'stabbed in the back' by
political upheaval at home. This in turn rendered negotiations at the
Paris Peace Conference more difficult than they otherwise might have been.

While Maurice acknowledged
the validity of this argument he ultimately discounted it on the basis that
Allied supply lines were essentially over-extended at the time the armistice
was agreed, and that further military advances would have resulted in
starvation in the Allies' front lines.

General Sir Frederick
Maurice on the Allied Decision to Accept an Armistice on 11 November 1918

An extract from The Last
Four Months by Sir Frederick Maurice (1919)

The opinion is widely held
that the Armistice of November 11th was premature.

It is argued that we had the German armies at our mercy, and that the
foundations of peace would have been more sure if we had ended the war by
forcing the surrender in the field of a great part of those armies, or, failing
that, had driven our beaten enemy back across the Rhine and followed him into
the heart of Germany.

The reception of the German troops by the German people,
their march into the German towns through triumphal arches and beflagged streets
with their helmets crowned with laurels, and the insistent statements in Germany
that the German armies had not been defeated, that the Armistice had been
accepted to save bloodshed, and to put an end to the sufferings of the women and
children aroused amazement and disgust in the victors.

There was very real
anxiety lest after all we had failed to convince Germany that war did not pay;
it was felt that we ought to have brought the realization of what war means home
to the German people in their own country, and that, had we done so, the
long-drawn-out negotiations in Paris would have been concluded more speedily and
more satisfactorily.

It is worth while, therefore, examining the situation as it
was at the time of the Armistice, and considering the case as it presented
itself to the men who had to decide whether hostilities should cease or not.

There is no question but that the German armies were completely and decisively
beaten in the field. The German plenipotentiaries admitted it when they met
Marshal Foch, and von Brockdorff-Rantzau admitted it at Versailles, when he said
after the Allied peace terms had been presented to him: "We are under no
illusions as to the extent of our defeat and the degree of our want of power... We know that the power of the German army is broken."

Even if these admissions had not been made, the condition of the German lines of
retreat to the Rhine is conclusive evidence of the condition of their armies. Every road was littered with broken-down motor-trucks, guns, machine guns and
trench mortars.

Great stacks of supplies and of military stores of all kinds
were abandoned. Every railway line was blocked with loaded trucks which the
Germans had been unable to remove. The sixty miles of railway in the valley of
the Meuse between Dinant and Mezieres was filled from end to end with a
continuous line of German freight trains carrying guns, ammunition, engineering
equipment, and other paraphernalia. On the Belgian canals alone over eight
hundred fully charged military barges were found.

It is beyond dispute that on November 11th the lines of communication
immediately behind the German armies had been thrown into complete disorder by
the streams of traffic which were converging on the Meuse bridges, disorder
greatly intensified by the attacks of the Allied airmen.

The German armies,
unable to resist on the fighting front, could no longer retreat in good order,
partly because of the congestion on the roads and railways behind them, which
not only hampered the movements of the troops, but prevented the systematic
supply to them of food and ammunition, partly owing to the fact that there were
not horses left to draw the transport of the fighting troops.

If ever armies were in a state of hopeless rout, the German armies were in the
second week of November, 1918. The morale of the troops was gone, the
organization of the services on which they depended for their needs had collapsed. This being so, why did we allow the German armies to escape from a
hopeless position? Why did we not at once follow up the military advantage which
we had gained at such cost?

In order to get an answer to these questions I visited the fronts of the Allied
armies shortly after the conclusion of the Armistice. I there found, after
travelling down the line from north to south, that amongst the fighting troops of
the Belgian, British, French and American armies the opinion was unanimous that
they had got the Germans on the run and could have kept them on the run
indefinitely, or until they laid down their arms.

On the American front in
particular, where there were large numbers of troops ready and eager to go
forward who had not yet taken part in a great battle, there was a very strong
feeling that they had been robbed of the fruits of victory.

When, however, I inquired the opinion of those behind the fighting fronts who
were responsible for feeding the troops and keeping them supplied with all that
was necessary to enable them to march forward, I heard a different story.

Everywhere I was told that the Allied armies, which were on or were marching
towards the Meuse, had on November 11th reached, or very nearly reached, the
farthest limit at which for the time being they could be kept regularly
supplied.

The reasons for this were twofold. In the first place the Allied
lines of communication grew steadily longer as the Germans were driven back, and
even before our victorious advance began the state of the railways and the
amount of rolling stock in France had caused anxiety. For four and a half years
the railway systems of Northeastern France had been strained to the limit of
their capacity, and the effects of that strain were beginning to be serious in
1918.

Both we and the Americans had made great efforts to improve and extend the
railway systems in our respective zones. During 1918 the British military
railway administration in France built or reconstructed 2,340 miles of
broad-gauge and 1,348 miles of narrow-gauge railways, while to supplement the
French rolling stock we sent to France 1,200 locomotives and 52,600 cars.

The
shipment across the Channel of such cumbrous and heavy objects as locomotives
and trucks was a slow and difficult business, and the needs of the armies were
always growing faster than were the resources of the railways.

If these were our difficulties, those of the American army were greater, owing
to the rapid growth of the army during the latter half of the year 1918, the
shortage of shipping capable of crossing the Atlantic, and the necessity of
giving first place to the transportation of troops and of war material.

Up to
the end the railways tinder American control in France suffered from a
deficiency in rolling stock, and had great difficulty in meeting the demands of
the large forces engaged in the Meuse-Argonne battle at the end of an
ever-lengthening line of communications.

The French armies, which in the middle of September had been extended along the
outside of the great bow made by the German lines between St. Quentin and
Verdun, had the longest distances to advance in following up the German retreat,
and before the advance began the French Government had cut down the railway
transportation in the interior of the country to the bare minimum necessary for
the preservation of the industrial and social life of France, and even then was
unable to meet the full demands of the French armies and to supplement the
railway material which Great Britain and America had been able to produce.

The
Belgian armies had hardly any resources of their own and no means whatever of
developing their means of transportation. The result of all this was that the
mere lengthening of the Allied lines of communications by the German retreat,
apart altogether from any other action by the enemy, threw a very great strain
upon the Allied railway administrations.

The Germans were, however, very active and
skilful in damaging the roads and
railways before they retreated, and this damage was extended by the destructive
power of the artillery of both sides. Every railway bridge, large or small, was
blown up, the railway embankments were cut, long stretches of track were
destroyed, the stations were burned down, and the telegraph lines were almost
obliterated and the instruments removed.

The Germans had left behind them mines
buried under the railway lines, and these exploded often after the first damage
had been repaired and the trains were running, with the result that there was
constant interruption to the traffic. One of our Army Commanders told me that,
owing to the constant explosion of mines behind his front, during the last
stages of the advance of his army his railhead was retreating faster than his
troops were advancing.

The consequence of this was that on November
11th, despite the most strenuous
and devoted work by all concerned in the repair and working of the railways, the
farthest points at which supplies could be delivered by rail were from
thirty-five to fifty miles in a direct line behind the front, and often double
this distance by road.

This gap had to be bridged by the motor transport, which,
of course, had to use the roads. But the destruction of the roads by the Germans
was as thorough as their destruction of the railways. Not only were the bridges
destroyed, but mines were sprung at every crossroad.

I remember counting eleven
mine craters on three miles of the main road between Le Quesnoy and Mons. This
damage could only be very roughly repaired, while the wet weather and the heavy
traffic of the German retreat and of our advance increased the work of
destruction.

The heavy motor lorries, loaded with supplies and ammunition, had
to plough their way slowly through these broken roads from the railheads to the
troops, and return to the railheads to fill up. At the time of the
Armistice the motor lorries were working in double and treble shifts, and
the strain upon them caused by the bad roads and the incessant work was such
that in the Fourth Army on November 11th more than half of the lorries at the service of the army had
broken down.

The troops were receiving no more than bare necessities, and at one
time had with them nothing more than the day's food carried by the men.